I went to hang Christmas lights at Lou's house. I do it every year for him, he's my buddy. We lived through Jaclyn Smith and Christopher Reeve tv movies together. He's 84 now. When I see him he looks like himself but elfin. His face all scruffy from not shaving. Wearing old sweatpants and a grungy old sweatshirt and a vest. For the pocket, he says. I love a pocket too, I say. We talk about our love of cargo pants. I tell him I've been wanting sweatpant cargo pants. The ultimate.
He tells me he's been forgetting stuff.
Next to my mom, he's the king of remembering. He's still sweet and he's still bright. He didn't say my name once though. And he always says Juliet is the Sun.
I hang his lights and his house has just been painted which in the 25 years I've known him has got to be the first time. He likes things like his sweatpants. Not fancy, and well lived in. I am like this too. This is why I love him. He was the kid on the playground that everyone loved because he'd play any game. Not playing to win, playing because he likes to play.
I hang the lights and it's the first time I've been away from my mom for a few weeks. Being trapped in Lou's bushes and wrestling with a ladder seem easy. Staple gunning over your head isn't easy or fun, but compared to 24 hour care of your once vibrant mom and now slippery sloping mom, hanging lights in the middle of a jungle full of vipers would be a problem I could see the end to.
I think about these people who are taking steps away from me. I was thinking I wonder if I ask Lou if he felt like his life went the way he wanted, if he felt satisfied, what he would answer. I think about how he raised his daughters as a mother and a father. I think about how he isn't as concerned with the fading of things as I am. He's just living his life.
He would be pretty sure that it isn't the end of your life that defines your life. It's your whole life that defines your life.
I am careful with the strings of lights this year. I unroll them gently and like an old woman, like I care. I don't break things this time (okay, one bulb, but not from mishandling). I don't want everything to be rushed and broken. I want to do it right.
This year I don't electrocute myself. I don't fall on the ladder or cuss. I brought my own staple gun. I was prepared, careful, methodical, enjoying the cold wintery air, not loving the physical working part of work cause I was tired, but glad for an end of a day that included kindergartners, lunch with my mom, a Christmas tree all decorated at home, a friend bringing me bacon, time in a car by myself and an elfin boss.
When I was leaving, his house all lit up he said look, you helped Christmas.
In his puffy black vest that looks like it belongs to a family of kind mice in a trunk in a winter attic in New Hampshire.
We forgot to make caramel corn this year, Lou. I say. We usually send it out.
Yeah, he says. We did.
